Another article about the lack of overt political messages, or even a political context, in today’s popular music (this time from an American perspective). Yesterday I mentioned Marilyn Manson’s statement that he ‘preferred’ Republican Presidents as people raged against them and aspects of that sentiment are echoed here by Dorian Lynskey. I wasn’t referring to music when I mentioned it but rather the protest that has been, if not exactly sweeping, then massively increasing across the UK in the past year. It’s difficult not to wonder if it would be happening if Labour had regained power and implemented a cuts programme – not because the action is unjustified but because a right-wing ‘centre-left’ party can get away with things that their explicitly right-wing counterparts would find much more difficult (the introduction of tuition fees and the increasing marketisation of the NHS being perfect examples.) So yes, it would make sense that Obama being in the White House would stifle the tendency of musicians to speak out. That doesn’t explain the equal lack of activity in the UK, where we have an aggressively right-wing government facing a weak opposition party.

The effects of the media and technology could be investigated and debated for years to come (I’ve long said that we will have no idea how much technology is changing us in very fundamental ways until long after it has already happened, if we realise at all) but it does sadly seem to have become a truism that a ‘political’ musician is an absurd notion worthy of ridicule. It’s as if our collective judgement of popular music has regressed to the days before anyone took it seriously as an artform and now all people want from it is dancing and synthetic, obstentatious emotion. This has gone hand in hand with the acceleration of the ‘Idol’-isation of music. On these ‘reality’ shows you progress if you fit into an easily digested box, don’t stray from it, keep smiling and do what you’re told. If you can have a ‘journey’ which involves you having trite realisations about your self-worth and crying, all the better. If you actually love music, have a firm idea of what you want to be and are not afraid to speak about it, you’re doomed. Our celebration of blankess and conformity reaches ever more perverse heights and where does an opinionated, politically aware pop star fit into that? They’d do better to shut up and sing another song about clubbing.